


Hollow Man, Holy Man

by cadkitten



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Childhood Friends, Dark, Death, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Father Todd, Gen, Love Confessions, Mental Anguish, Murder, Psychological Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 17:44:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12304323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadkitten/pseuds/cadkitten
Summary: In the dead of the night, Jason feels like he can still hear it: he can hear the phone ring, hear his fifteen year old self answer it, and what follows is some of the worst moments of his life: the pleas falling from his best friend's lips, the apology that hestilldoesn't quite comprehend what it was for, and then the sounds of a brutal murder.





	Hollow Man, Holy Man

**Author's Note:**

> #JayDickWeek - Day 7: Talons/Court of Owls // Father Todd  
> I should be up front here. This is dark as hell and not at all what I meant to write when I sat down. This is... well... it's creepy, at best.  
> Beta: kate1zena  
> Song[s]: 11:11 by In This Moment

In the dead of the night, Jason feels like he can still hear it: he can hear the phone ring, hear his fifteen year old self answer it, and what follows is some of the worst moments of his life: the pleas falling from his best friend's lips, the apology that he _still_ doesn't quite comprehend what it was for, and then the sounds of a brutal murder. 

The _screams_. Jason will never forget the way his skin crawled or the way his own terrified voice crackled across the line. He wakes up sometimes and hears the shuffling sound of movement inside his own room and his reaction is always the same. He lays there, waiting on whatever it is to take him from this life, to pull him away into whatever nightmare his friend was taken into. 

It's been years and yet the sounds and sensations of hearing the one person he cared _so much_ about die remain. If he dwells too much, his heart breaks all over again and he feels like the very breath in his lungs is being pulled out. Some part of him understands that this is panic and, in some dim distant sort of way, he knows that this is what life has given him to deal with. All the same, he never addresses it as such, never _treats_ it in all the ways society has found to cope with such a reaction. He lets it come, lets it wash over him; he calls it his penance for listening instead of hanging up and calling for help sooner than he had. 

He understands that it was fear – that it was the overwhelming anguish of a teenager that kept him on the line – and he knows he couldn't have reacted like the adult he is now all those years ago, but it feels like he _should have_. Feels like he owed something to Dick that he didn't pay up and so he lets the grief and the pain consume him. 

If he's honest, it's why he's here – why he spends his days in this church, why he's chosen the most incredibly chaste path he could have ever decided upon. No pleasure in this life. No _happiness_. He only sits and listens to the horrors of other people's confessions, preaches forgiveness to others and yet will _never_ forgive himself. He tells them to love thy neighbor and yet has none of his own. He tells them to love themselves while he's consumed with his own hate. 

If they knew, would they forgive him?

Jason understands somewhere deep inside that he doesn't need to live like this, that Dick would _never_ have wanted this for him, but it doesn't matter in the long run because he could never forgive himself for what he didn't do.

He sits in his chambers, back to the cold stone wall, his robes keeping him warm – warmer than he thinks he should be allowed. He keeps it cold in here, doesn't turn the heat on until the dead of winter. He can see his breath on the air and he _pretends_ , grasps at the straws of something he shouldn't believe in to tell himself that Dick's here with him, that his best friend comes to visit him when the world covers itself with the snow he so loved. 

When he hears the shift in the darkness, he talks to it, just like he always has, heedless of the fact that his mind knows it's absolutely nothing. He tells it how many things he regrets, tells the shadowy corners of the room how there's this longing deep inside him to be anywhere but here and how he feels like he _has_ to stay. He talks about how he knows it's the biggest betrayal of all, serving a God he only half believes in, a God he thinks is steeped in cruelty for claiming a young life in such a brutal fashion. 

Never once does he realize that _two_ were claimed that night – that his own life was given in that same moment.

Sometimes, he tells the darkness that he feels like he can _smell_ the blood, yet knows it's impossible because he never even saw the crime scene. They never found the body. Such a typical Gotham murder, so many creatures in the night that _feed_ , that claim and take and leave _nothing_ behind. But he swears he can smell the bitter copper of blood on the air some nights, feels like that is part of his penance for not hanging up sooner, for not trying to save his friend's life. 

When he's in the confessional, hidden behind decorative wire and the overwhelming scent of cedar, he feels like a caged animal, like something wild that should never be hemmed in; yet, he volunteers more often than not, listens to the parishioners tell him of their sins. He takes them on himself and lets them wear him down until his physical body mirrors his mental existence, until he's shaking in his chambers, unable to move for days at a time. 

The others call it a gift from God. He knows it is his burden to carry, the weight of his own sin manifested in physicality.

Tonight he breathes his words to the silence, whispers his prayers intermingled with the words of a grief so overwhelming he cannot escape. He's been plagued this past week by the eerie sounds in the night, by the choking scent of blood on the air that seems to be in more places than usual. His weekly trip to the street market left him feeling watched, brought him back to the church in an unnerved state of being. Even the most private of moments have been clogged with an anguish that hasn't been _this bad_ in years. It's as if he can feel Dick waiting on just the other side of the veil. As if his very presence is in the room with him nearly all the time.

Jason tries to pray it away; speaks words he only half believes in, pleas that feel strained on his lips, speaks until his voice doesn't work, rocks until his muscles give out. Exhausted and unable to do more than stare across the room, he _sees it_. He sees the shadows move, sees the ghost of a person in his room, and he lets the tears roll down his cheeks for the first time in years, lets his grief consume him. 

He'd know those movements anywhere, would know the lean grace that was Dick Grayson at a single glance.

The world seems to shift around him and the shadows slip away, giving him one perfect glimpse of the one person he's _never_ been able to let go of, one instant where he can see Dick's features in the moonlight, where he can see the mask that hangs loosely from his fingertips, where he can _see_ the bloodstains that mar the front of the brown and gold costume he wears. 

"Forgive yourself, Jason."

Words that echo in the halls of his mind, that leave him shaking as he stares at the empty spot that he swears just contained his friend and he feebly reaches for the air that he swears is warmer than it should be, ghosts his fingertips over the part of the moonbeam he would lay down his life to promise he _saw_ his friend in. 

It leaves him questioning his sanity. Did he or did he not see what he thinks he did? Was it exhaustion? The edge of madness? Perhaps after all these years he's finally taken the last plunge into his penance. The ghosts of his past becoming literal, coming to haunt him.

It's weeks before he feels the presence again, before the shadows start to shift like the always have, and he wonders about that, too. Did his mind try to give him a rest? Did it do its best to let him sleep like a normal person for a few nights, to breathe and feel like he might be alive? Or was that an illusion just the same?

He's never told anyone, would _never_ dare speak the words of what happens in his chambers at night or what he feels when he's alone. The prickle of being watched, the constant raise of the hair on his neck, the icy tingle that tells him to run. He knows if danger ever really visited him, he'd die in an instant; he's so attuned to ignoring all the signs. Not that anyone has anything to gain by harming him. He owns nothing more than the food he will eat that evening, his robes, his rosary, and one old worn photograph. He isn't some light to snuff out – his light long gone. He thinks to himself that he wouldn't even scream if someone came for him. 

Sometimes he thinks about that. Thinks about how he would let death claim him without struggle. 

His hands shake sometimes, a byproduct of his senses being on overdrive over half of his life. He stands in the washroom and lets them shake until he has to clasp them together to stop it, until he has to close his eyes and count to ten or twenty. 

It gets worse every day.

It's as if he can feel death creeping up on him, like his own mortality is shadowing him and he wonders about that. Is it something everyone can feel? Or is his just closer than everyone else's because of what he did?

He finds himself huddled in a corner of his room, fear tearing at the frayed edges of what little nerves he has left. His breath hitches again and again and he can feel the haze that is panic drawing up inside him. His hands fumble over his rosary and his lips form the words to the only prayer that's ever given him solace – silent but no less powerful.

This time there's touch associated with the presence. This time, when he opens his eyes, he can _feel_. There's Dick's hand on his knee, there's concern in his eyes, and this time he lets himself reach out. There's cloth beneath his fingertips, there's _warmth_ beneath the clothing, and he stares at him in disbelief, clutches at him and asks, "What fresh Hell is this?"

Shoes against concrete and the weight of Dick's body against his own, and Jason swears he's losing his mind. He won't let go, won't stop the way his hands grip even tighter, even though he knows that this isn't real. 

Dick _can't_ be here.

There's pain in his heart and there's a significant lack of air in his lungs. His vision's fading at the edges and he _hates_ this part, hates that he'll wake up to no one in his room, to _nothing_ in his world, and he chokes out the only thing he really wants just before his world goes black. 

"Don't leave me."

When he wakes up, he's not on the floor. He's in his bed and it's _warm_ and he tries and fails to understand what's happened. 

It's supposed to be cold in here, supposed to simulate what he thinks Dick's corpse must feel like. He'd never admit that, _never_ speak the words, but this... it's a part of his own self-induced torture. 

His first three steps are trembling, fragile little things and he realizes he hasn't eaten all day. His head swims and he sags and there's someone there to catch him, arms around his middle, a strength unreasonable for such a lithe form that brings him to his chair and settles him in front of bread and butter that's been left for him. There's a touch to his forehead and when he looks up, he finds Dick's concerned face in the faint light of the room, sees the pale features awash with something that had always been so familiar on his best friend's face. 

Caring. Love. _Warmth_.

His eyes follow the lines of his body, flick over the mess of his hair, the pale hollow of his throat, across the expanse of bloodstained armor of gold and brown, over the emblem he _knows_ far too well, and he's quick to find the weapons strapped to Dick's back, and then... across the table to the mask that lays there in all its horror. 

This man... this _being_ in his room. This cannot be Dick Grayson. This man is a Talon and the Dick he knew would _never_ have allowed that. Would _never_ have claimed a life or so much as harmed a fly.

His gut clenches but he reaches for the bread anyway, slowly consumes it if for no other reason than this man is _dangerous_.

\---

It takes him weeks to accept the truth of it. To take the silent presence that follows him around as what it is, what it has always been. This _Talon_ has been shadowing him for years, has been his nightmare and his saving grace, and Jason isn't sure what to do with that. 

The edge of fear fades back and he feels stronger than he has in years, though no less conflicted in his mind. 

There had been no body. Nothing but Dick's blood drenching the floors of the apartment. 

And there had been the apology. The one he never understood, had never grasped _why_ it had come.

When he finds the Talon in his room once again, he pulls the chair over to his bed and then sits with his back against the wall, his legs curled up under him on the mattress and nods toward the chair, watching him cross to it and sit. He hears the wood creak and he hears the grit of dirt against the floor beneath the chair legs. 

This is reality.

He sighs and he formulates the words to ask, quietly collects himself to try to figure out what the truth of all of this is, but before he can ask any of it, Dick answers it for him – and he knows that it _is_ Dick Grayson behind this mask.

"I've always loved you."

That voice, those words... once upon a time he would have given anything to hear them. There was a time where he would have returned them, where he could have _felt_ them. 

But Jason is a hollow man now. Jason does not feel anything but the weight of the world any longer.

He rests his head against the wall and he _accepts_.


End file.
